As a life-long Knicks fan, these past few weeks have been nothing short of surreal. I could never in wildest dreams have envisioned anything close to Jeremy Lin’s rise. Like most of the city, country, and, to a certain extent, world, I cannot get enough of “Linsanity.”
One of the more interesting consequences of the Jeremy Lin phenomenon is the rise of the word “Linsanity” itself. While many have been making puns out of Jeremy Lin’s last name, arguably, the most popular of these puns has been “Linsanity.” In fact, “Linsanity” is so popular in American vernacular that the American Dialect Society (a non-profit group of linguists who in January of every year, vote on the top word or phrase that has become prominent or notable in the past year) has made statements indicating that “Linsanity” is a contender for the word of the year. Last year’s word of the year was “Occupy.”
As a result of “Linsanity’s” popularity, it seems likely that there will be some semblance of a legal battle over the trademarking of word “Linsanity.” Jeremy Lin himself filed an application with the United States Patent and Trademark Office seeking to trademark the phrase “Linsanity” on Feb. 13th, but he was not the first. According to Bloomberg, Yenchin Chang, a 35-year-old resident of California filed an application on the 7th, and on the 9th, Andrew Slayton, also of California, filed an application to trademark “Linsanity.”
In all likelihood, if the United States Patent and Trademark Office is going to award a trademark for the term “Linsanity,” it will award it to Jeremy Lin over the other applicants even though they filed before Lin. Because “Linsanity” “points uniquely and unmistakably” to Lin and because the others seemingly put in the application’s hoping to profit off “Linsanity’s” rise, without Lin’s permission and thus were likely acting in “bad faith,” the trademark would most likely be awarded to Lin.
Assuming Jeremy Lin is awarded the trademark, I cannot help but wonder how much his ownership would impact illegal usage of “Linsanity,” specifically in China who is known for not adhering to American intellectual property law. Will the overwhelming popularity of Jeremy Lin in China (who claim Lin as their own even though both of his parents emigrated from Taiwan), impact China’s illegal goods market, specifically those using intellectual property belonging to him?